


Perseverance (Watson)

by Linguini



Series: Perseverence [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Brain Injury, Gen, Keepsakes, Lists, Self-Sacrifice, Surrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-24
Updated: 2010-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 20:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linguini/pseuds/Linguini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson does his thing...at a terrible price</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perseverance (Watson)

It isn’t the sight of a full ink well that shatters his reserve. Nor the dust-covered physician’s bag that sits just under a worn armchair. The thing that finally ruins the stone walls of his famous composure is a simple white flower.

They hadn’t been on a case. Watson hadn’t been visiting a patient. They had simply been walking on a gorgeous spring day, free from worry and engaged in the deepest sort of conversation that comes from intimate understanding. In a fit of mischief, Holmes had plucked a small flower from a nearby bush and tucked it into the brim of Watson’s hat.

Together, they approached the road, but were brought up short by a mother’s cry and a shout from an approaching cab driver. Watson, ever the man of action, dove into the street to rescue the wayward child, but his gallantry and fortitude were no match for the force of a horseshoe’s glancing blow to the head.

Holmes knows he should be grateful to whatever Fates have spared his dearest companion from death yet again. And yet, he cannot find it within himself to appreciate the miracle of life when every fiber of his being cries out at the injustice of the loss of such a brilliant medical mind and generous soul.

Watson still retains the ability to perform some basic tasks with assistance, but every day his patience grows shorter as he is forced to allow Holmes to perform tasks that his formerly-nimble surgeon’s fingers could have done with no trouble. Surprisingly, he takes his inability to properly write in stride, knowing as he does that it is only a temporary (two years, six months, and four days by Holmes’s count) condition. Instead, he mourns the loss of his extensive vocabulary, often struggling to find the right words to express the most basic of ideas.

To Holmes, the grief is a dim ember, buried deeply within the basement of his heart where he keeps those memories and thoughts that would do him most harm. Instead, he focuses on the day-to-day management of Watson’s incapacities. If the strictures of eating on a regular schedule, or refraining from normal musical pursuits wear on him and suppress his thinking, it is a price he is more than willing to pay in exchange for easing a bit of the guilt his one moment of inaction has engendered. And if every day he adds another thing to the his internal list of “Things That Bother Watson” that begins with “Costume changes, no matter how visibly performed” and ends with “The scent of cinnamon,” he finds it provides at least a dim replica of the mental exertion and capacity for data he demonstrated in his previous occupation.

For now, he is content to live with Watson in Surrey, in a small cottage on the lakeside. It is no one’s business but his own if, concealed in the pages of his personal diary, he keeps a small pressed flower and if the accidental destruction of that flower in an unexpected rainstorm overwhelms him with a flood of emotions he hasn’t experienced since his childhood. It is enough to have Watson nearby for the occasional glimpse of that pawky humor or fond recognition.


End file.
